“It is important not to trust people too much.”

Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn’t fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will – with luck – come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise

That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing – which is never an easy thing to do.

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.

The writer is all alone.

I always knew who I was and where I had come from. I was not looking for a home in other people’s lands.

Argentine political life is like the life of an ant community or an African forest tribe: full of events, full of crisis and deaths, but life is always cyclical, and the year ends as it begins.

Writers should provoke disagreement.

Men need history; it helps them to have an idea of who they are. But history, like sanctity, can reside in the heart; it is enough that there is something there.

The world is always in movement.

You can’t deny what you’ve learned; you can’t deny your travels; you can’t deny the nature of your life.

Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.

I’m thought to be a tough writer, but I’m really a softie.

My life is short. I can’t listen to banality.

His ignorance seemed to widen with everything he read.

It’s very attractive to people to be a victim. Instead of having to think out the whole situation, about history and your group and what you are doing. If you begin from the point of view of being a victim, you’ve got it half-made. I mean intellectually.